From what I can see, you have a good chance of getting your printer working with CUPS and the driver here

First install CUPS, following the first link. Don't do the

Code:

cat test>/dev...

part way through. It won' work for you. After CUPS in installed, you can find some drivers for other distros at the second link. I would choose the RedHat one. There are probably install instructions on that site somewhere because they are not in the file._________________Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

You cannot install an RPM directly on Gentoo, You have to take it apart and install the bits by hand.
There are only two files in the package - I didn't look like a proper RMP. If the filename ends in RPM, try rpm2targz to make it more manageable. emerge rpm2targz if neded.

This will give you a fille called cupswrapperHL2040-1.0.0-1.i386.tar.gz which you unpack with

This was much trickier than it should have been, but it's now working here. I'm assuming you already have a working CUPS installation and that usblp support is either built into your kernel or loaded as a module.

1. emerge rpm2targz
2. Download both brhl2040lpr-1.1.2-2.i386.rpm and cupswrapperHL2040-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm from the Brother Web site. They're in the Downloads -> Drivers -> Monochrome laser -> Linux section of the site.
3. Convert both RPM files to tarballs using rpm2targz, then extract the tarballs:

5. Modify the /usr/local/Brother/cupswrapper/cupswrapperHL2040-1.0.0 script to point to /etc/init.d/cupsd instead of /etc/init.d/cups; this change is required in three locations in this file.
6. Run the /usr/local/Brother/cupswrapper/cupswrapperHL2040-1.0.0 script to set up the Brother HL2040 laser.
7. Create a symbolic link from /usr/local/Brother/inf/brHL2040rc to /usr/local/Brother/inf/brPrintList.

Code:

cd /usr/local/Brother/inf
ln -sf brHL2040rc brPrintList

8. The printer defaults to A4 sized paper; if you're in North America you probably want to open /usr/local/Brother/inf/brHL2040rc in an editor and set PaperType=Letter.
9. Fire up the CUPS administration console (http://localhost:631 just might work); your Brother HL-2040 should be listed, and you should be able to print a test page. Yay!

Wonderful, thank you denials! I had myself just gotten to the CUPS step after having installed, but never got the darn thing to print. A couple notes:

for step (5), I found no entries in the /usr/local/Brother/cupswrapper/cupswrapperHL2040-1.0.0 file that needed changing to /etc/init.d/cupsd; the entries I saw were already that way...

The only thing I didn't remember doing when I tried setting up the printer a few months back was setting up the symbolic link, so if I had to make a wager, then it would be the creation of the symlink that made it work.

Actually, I'm still having problems. As soon as I installed it with your guide, ti worked fine until I rebooted. Now I can't even access the the CUPS local site to check my printers status. And yes, CUPS is as put as boot.

First of all: one huge thank you goes to Denials for this howto. You just made my day.
This Howto also works flawlessly for a Brother HL-2030. There's only one little problem: the drivers do not work with cups-1.2.x. Even the workaround proposed in the Brother FAQs didn't work (for me). Solution: install cups-1.1.28.

Cheers,
rey_________________I like to wait to see how things turn out
If You Apply Some Pressure
WHAT HAPPENS when you lose EVERYTHING?
You start again.
You start all over again.Maximo Park - Apply Some Pressure

I had the same problem not finding the filter and copied brlpdwrapperHL2040 to the directories listed above but now I get "Printer not connected; will retry in 30 seconds..." error in CUPS. The printer is connected, any ideas of what to try? I've restarted CUPS, rebooted, and made sure USB printing support was compiled in kernel.